


Some Cases Are Impossible

by gala_apples



Series: Some Day, A Suit [3]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Coming Out, Multi, Pre-Relationship, Trans Male Character, past transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 16:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1033842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the future Peter will blame this freak out on not paying attention during briefings. He'll be wrong. Neal knows it would have come up sooner or later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Cases Are Impossible

Peter markets the case during the briefing as a Hearts Wide Open 2.0; a small group of people using medical needs to bilk other people out of hundreds of thousands. Diana, Jones, and Peter’s underlings all have folders open in front of them. Neal has one too, but he hasn’t as much as glimpsed at it. He’s busy rolling his hat up and down his arm, thinking about what sort of nasty tricks he and Mozzie might do this time. It won’t be itching powder and switched dry-cleaning again, Mozzie will never agree to doing the same thing twice.

Neal doesn’t realise the full breadth of the case until it’s too late. Until Peter’s mentioning needing to visit a trans support group. Until Peter’s saying he’ll need to pretend to be M-t-F for the duration. He actually says it like that, the letters. M. T. F. 

Neal panics. It’s not the same panic he’s had a dozen times before, like when he had to save himself and Alex and Peter from drowning in the reservoir, or when El was kidnapped. Those were all relatively short cons. Awful, terrifying, but short. Now Peter’s picking at the edges of something Neal’s been running twenty years, been running so long he can go weeks without even thinking about the mechanics of running it. It’s a crumbling of foundations, an attempt at unmaking him, deliberate or not. Later that direct hit to the lizard brain will be the only way Neal can feel less of a fool for his least subtle escape ever. He literally stands up in the briefing room, shoves Peter out of his way, and sprints out. When the number above the elevator reveals it to be eight floors away Neal doesn’t wait, just alters his movements to out and down. He checks the elevators five floors in a row before it’s close enough that he can stand to wait for it.

Once he’s on the sidewalk Neal feels better. Like he can breathe again. His tie is tight around his throat, but it’s nothing compared to how the ace bandages used to feel. There are so many people on the sidewalk and all they see is a handsome man breathing. Out here he’s everyone and no one, which means he’s safe.

Peter rushes out the front of the building seconds later, the difference of a direct elevator and an elevator that got stopped several floors in a row. His eyes are already scanning the distance to try to spot which way his rogue convict has gone. Neal doesn’t want to have this conversation, but he doesn’t want Peter chasing down nothing either. That won’t look good to the higher ups. Not to mention forcing Peter to do so will be a large step back in the trust he and the Burkes are building, trust that might end in some truly spectacular places.

“Peter!” he calls out, just loud enough to cut through the crowd.

Peter is beside him in a few long strides. He straightens his tie, trying to act as though he’s not coming down from a huge burst of adrenaline. “Neal. What the hell was that?”

“I’m not doing the case Peter. It makes me sick to my stomach.”

Neal’s expecting the hundredth reminder of ‘you do the case or you go back to prison’. He’s got no solid argument against it, except for the truth, which is _never_ being told, but he’ll figure something out. He’s Neal freakin Caffrey -not to mention a dozen other men with perfectly capable brains- and he can talk his way out of almost everything. 

Peter doesn’t give him the old line, or something like it. Instead Peter frowns, then shakes his head. “Go home Caffrey.”

“What? No, Peter, we can work on another case. Just not _that_.” He feels a lot less like he’s going to throw up now. He’ll master his stomach and he’ll crack a bank fraud wide open and everything will be okay, except for tonight when he goes to sleep and dreams about being a teenager trapped in his old, fucked up, wrong body with his first awful identity. But that’s at least twelve hours from now, and it’s not like he’s the type to wake up screaming. Any nightmares he might have won’t bother June, and he can do his damn job until then.

“I’m disappointed in you. I don’t want you in the office until tomorrow. We’ll discuss your role in this sting then.”

With that Peter turns away and goes back inside. The bile rises to Neal’s throat again, and this time there’s no anonymous crowd to run into to make himself feel better. 

He feels sick the whole way home. Every step Neal takes he thinks about going back to the office just to see what Peter would do. He doesn’t turn around, eventually lets himself inside June’s with a determinedly not shaking hand. Going back to the bureau is a legitimately horrible idea. The only reason he thought about it is because there’s a tiny criminal in the back of Neal’s brain, constantly flipping off any and all authorities. A triumphant moment of spite isn’t worth the near certainty of a confrontation. Neal’s _had_ this confrontation. He’s had it hundreds of times in St. Louis; every second kid at school thought they had the right to ask if it was true, what was wrong with ‘her’. He can count on one hand the number of times it went well. It doesn’t take a professional gambler to know that’s bad odds. He doesn’t want to have it again today, so there’s no point to being at the bureau. He doesn’t want to have the confrontation tomorrow either. And that’s a far larger problem.

Once he’s in his apartment Neal bypasses the wine and goes straight to the cans of ginger ale he very occasionally cuts with gin when he wants a hard drink. Post coming out and pre Mozzie he had a lot of experience in taking care of himself, and ginger ale’s always worked for him before. It doesn’t do much to settle his stomach this time. Maybe it’s because it’s still carbonated. Maybe ginger ale is only good for nausea based on physical ailments, and this is a mental thing. Neal sips it methodically anyway. It’s better than doing nothing. The more he thinks about what’s in store tomorrow the more he wants to hurl all over the counter.

He starts pacing. He needs to get the blood flowing, needs more oxygen in his brain so he can think. That doesn’t help much either. His options are extremely limited and there are no good ones, only more or less horrible. Finally he calls the only person in the world that shares part of this burden with him.

“We need to leave, Moz.”

“Did your Suits not like the last thing you did in bed?” 

Mozzie doesn’t approve of the relationship he and Peter and El are on the verge of having. He also doesn’t believe that it hasn’t been going on for years, because he likes conspiracies as much as Neal likes a good hat. Normally a dig like that is enough to set up a satisfying bicker that leaves them understanding each other, even if Mozzie doesn’t get his commitment to what he calls ‘insane entanglements’, but Neal can’t do this right now. “I’m serious.”

“You do remember how well our trip to Cape Verde went, right?”

“Mozzie, they want to make me be a girl undercover.” He’s holding onto the phone so hard it feels like it might crack. He’s sure his knuckles would be white, if he could see them.

There’s a long pause before Mozzie comes back, strident. “I’ll start diverting our funds.”

“You don’t-”

“I’m going with you, of course. You would have been dead in Cape Verde if not for me.”

He would have been dead without Peter too, but that’s a luxury Neal can no longer afford.

He and Mozzie talk for a minute longer. It’s all business; what safehouse they’ll use while they’re waiting for the heat to die down, if Neal has any passports the feds don’t know about. Neal doesn’t doubt that they’ll end up talking at length about the problem, but it’ll be late night, over wine, in some room without windows. As detail oriented as Mozzie is, he also knows that business comes before chit-chat. They end the conversation with Mozzie promising to be over as soon as he figures out a lead.

Neal puts the phone down on the table. He massages his tense hand, thumb against the palm as the other four fingers circle over the top and knuckles. He should be thinking about packing. He can’t bring anything directly to any safe house, not with his tracker still on, but there should be unsuspicious third party locations that he can leave a duffle at now and go back for once he’s free. Above the ceiling tiles of a library or something. He should also be thinking about what forgeries will get the highest quick yield, so they’re not leaving the country on just Mozzie’s money.

All he’s thinking about is how much he doesn’t want to do this. Fleeing the country is the exact opposite of what Neal wants. There’s just _so much_ in New York. People and art and challenges that won’t be anywhere else. But he’s got no choice.

There’s a knock at the door, and it’s just proof of how much Neal’s regressed to sixteen, determined and clueless, that he says “Great, what country” as he opens the door to Mozzie. Because it’s not Mozzie, of course it’s not, and he should have been so much more careful because it’s Elizabeth and she’s frowning.

“Country, Neal?”

“June and I were going to debate a country’s best museums over wine,” he says easily. Or it should be easily, but El’s not buying it.

She puts her hands on her hips, pinching the sides of her teal A-line dress. “Peter said you said some inappropriate things and then he let you take the day, and now you’re plotting about countries? What’s going on?”

Something breaks in Neal. Not the thing he’s been building for the last two decades not to break -he won’t let that happen, that’s why he’s running- but something very much like it. Neal drops his head so he doesn’t have to look her in the eye. The grain of the floor can’t judge him. “I can’t do it.”

“Do what? Be sympathetic to transgender and genderqueer people for two days to rescue their siphoned grant?”

Oh, the ugly joke in that. Neal laughs, even though he knows it might be El’s last straw, because it’s just so brutally funny.

“Neal, I don’t understand.”

“I can’t,” he repeats.

“You don’t want to work this case so you’re running? At least with Kramer there was a reason.”

Neal doesn’t have to look up to know El’s angry. He can hear the fury in her voice. It makes sense. Every time he’s run he’s caused trouble for Peter. Of course she hates him for planning on doing it again. She can’t know he doesn’t want to, not when she’s walked in on him in the middle of gleefully planning it.

“I’d rather face Kramer a hundred times over.” He looks up when he says it. The very least he owes her is his sincerity. Not that she’ll believe it. Once a grifter always a grifter, after all.

Elizabeth looks so fucking disappointed. It hurts, even before she starts talking again. “What did you steal, Neal? What did you do?”

“It’s not what I did! It’s what I am!” Neal can’t remember the last time he shouted. Maybe at Fowler, in that locked room before Peter broke in to make everything worse, then better. It makes his throat burn.

“A con-” 

Neal laughs, interrupting her. “Close enough, when it boils down.”

She shakes her head, a tendril of hair untucking from her ear. “No, that’s not it. If you’re fleeing the country, if you’re leaving us when we’re so _close_ , it better be for a lot more than something we all already know.”

Neal doesn’t owe her this truth. This isn’t the sort of thing you owe someone. Especially not lovers. There’s no way to pay that sort of honesty back, and partners don’t last long if there’s too much debt between them. But that’s no longer a concern with El. Telling her now will be like telling Mozzie, long ago. Information the other party can use as they see fit. If she wants to tell Peter once he’s gone, that’s only fair.

“I was Dani Brooks. I mean, I was Neal, but they thought I was Dani. My mom thought I was sick. And I mean that primarily in a disgusting way, although insane played a part. Ellen didn’t really get it, but she tried. She and my girlfriend were the only ones to call me Neal. Even once the whole school knew, it was only Carrie. Ellen tried to get me hormone replacement therapy but my mom wouldn’t sign off and I was underage. I hustled pool and got it myself. It was a daily toss-up whether mom’d ignore me or explain exactly what was wrong with me. Finding out my dad was a dirty cop was the last straw. I came here, give or take a few states. And I was Neal Caffrey. And once I was this great man, why not be five, ten others?”

El has her hand over her mouth now. A picturesque moment of you know not what you ask, really.

“I cannot go into a room and pretend the thing I want desperately, more than anything else in the world, is to be a woman. I don’t want to run. I don’t want to hurt you and Peter. But it would be destroying myself to try and run that con for Peter.” Neal gestures. “You know me. I do what I have to do.”

“But that’s- Why didn’t you talk to Peter?”

Neal would explain that on the job Peter doesn’t tend to take a lot of suggestions, but that’s not the real reason. “I wanted us to work, El. Some men like women. Some men like men. Some like both. None like he-shes.”

Rage flares up on her face again. “I will punch you in the throat if you ever say that again, so help me god.”

Neal raises his hands in the classic ‘I have no weapons’ position. It’s not the worst thing he’s ever been called. Doesn’t even make the top five. Not to mention it’s not even an accurate comment. If anything he’d be a she-he. But if it offends El he can keep the realism down to a minimum.

El being El, she’s back to congenial, if worried, in moments. “I’m going to talk to Peter. Just calm down, okay? Play cards with June. Make a souffle. Forge something, even. Just don’t do anything permanent.”

He doesn’t point out that art forgery _is_ permanent because he doesn’t want being a jerk to be her last memory of him. Instead he walks her to the door and puts a hand on her shoulder for a moment. In another world Neal would be able to dart in for one last -first- kiss. This is not that world.

Maybe before he and Mozzie take off for an non-extraditing country, they can figure out Peter’s case. Ruining the lives of the man or group responsible for forcing his hand would give him the only satisfaction he’s likely to get.

Neal isn’t surprised when Peter crashes his attempt at making dinner, storming in without even knocking. Of course he’s angry. Neal always knew they’d part on bad terms. He doesn’t want that. He genuinely wants the complete opposite. It’s just logical. The phone call that night in Cape Verde was their best case scenario, and they’ve already used it up.

He’s not sure how ugly this will get, or if Peter even knows yet that it’ll be their goodbye. Neal can’t imagine El not telling him, but she’s surprised him before. He doesn’t let the worry show. He is the master of his own fate, and he can walk away from a bomb of Peter’s disgust.

Neal stays facing the stovetop, but acknowledges him. “Do you want a spoon to taste-test, or do you want to get started on the lecture?”

“Which?” Peter demands. “The lecture about how every time I think I know your past there’s more? Or the lecture about why you never talk to me rationally about cases you can’t manage?”

Neal doesn’t do anything as dramatic as whirling around to face Peter. He does however turn calmly. “You said can’t.”

“As opposed to won’t? Yes, I did. I listen to my wife. I’d listen to my boyfriend too, if he’d talk.”

Neal likes the sound of _boyfriend_. No doubt that’s why Peter said it, when they’ve barely discussed what a relationship could be like. It’s a misdirect. There’s something a lot more important in what he’s just said. “You said ‘he’.”

“Of course.”

“That hasn’t been my experience.” Neal crosses his arms. He knows it’s a defensive gesture, but it’s not like Peter isn’t already fully aware that he’s on edge.

“I don’t know how many times and how many different ways I have to say it, but I’d really appreciate you not attempting to get me to act like someone from your old life.”

Neal shrugs. Apart from Adler and Keller and a few others, his fellow con artists are generally decent people. And post puberty wasn’t completely bad, only ninety five percent so. He did manage a girlfriend, after all.

“We’ll figure out a different way to run the sting. I promise. But you can’t run, Neal.”

See? He _knew_ that Elizabeth had told him. “No?”

“I know that you don’t want to. I’m assuming that the reason you were going to was so that you weren’t forced to have the conversation you had with my wife.” 

“Better to leave them wanting,” Neal jokes.

“But you’ve had it, and it hasn’t had the outcome you were fearing. You’re a man and no one besides me and El have to know you’ve had to work for that.”

“And Mozzie.”

“Yes, of course he knows.”

Neal’s hearing sarcasm and that’s just not right. “Mozzie bankrolled everything when I still hadn’t broken four figures in the bank. He told me there was no point in waiting, that running a long con would be impossible if I was transitioning the whole time. He just took it for granted that I would. After my mom it was a huge relief.”

“I’m glad he was good to you. Sounds like the world owed you that. I’m just frustrated that I didn’t know, that after this long you still didn’t trust me.”

“I didn’t owe you coming out, Peter.”

“I didn’t say you did. I said that if you had talked to me rationally about needing to take a pass, instead of blurting some things that out of context sound extremely transphobic, that I would have listened.”

Neal opens his mouth to ask a cutting _would you have?_ , then closes it. Yes. Peter would have been willing to listen. That was never the question. Over the years there have been other cases that underlings have bowed out of, like super-vegan Montrose begging out of the money laundering through a butcher’s shop case. But ultimately Peter would have wanted an explanation that Neal couldn’t have given for why he needed to bow out, which would have put them on this exact same edge of run/don’t run, only twenty four hours later.

“Maybe” he grants.

“Yes,” Peter returns. “And for the record? That you for one minute thought I would be bigoted is just- Shit, Neal. I thought we understood each other better than this.”

“How can I make it up to you?” Neal won’t apologise for keeping himself safe, so that better not be what Peter is about to ask for. Whatever Peter does want, Neal will stay in New York to follow through with. If the Burkes start treating him differently he’ll leave with Mozzie. He fled St. Louis for a reason. But the way they’ve both reacted is promising. He doesn’t think he’ll have to, and the relief of that settles in his bones. He feels nearly weak with it.

“Tell me one thing about your life that I don’t already know that’s important to you.” Peter asks, and moves to the dining table to straddle the chair. Arms on the edge of the back, he doesn’t look like he’s moving any time soon.

Neal smiles slightly. It figures that Peter wants information, not a task done. He relocates to sit across from him and thinks. There are some things he can’t tell Peter until the anklet comes off, and maybe not even then, depending on the statute of limitations. And there are things that he can never tell anyone ever, because they’re ugly enough in his own head, never mind releasing them into the world. But there are some things that Pete doesn’t already know that might be good for him to know.

“I like being tickled.”

“Pardon?”

He repeats “I like being tickled.”

Peter frowns. “Neal, that hardly seems important.”

“In bed. And it _is_ important. My first girlfriend suggested it, just after she found out I wasn’t a lesbian. We were trying to figure out how to get each other off. More specifically, me off. The normal gamut of hands and mouths on junk worked for her.” Neal smiles nostalgically. “She came up with the idea that tickling would be a gender neutral sensation that would make me feel as out of control as her orgasms made her feel.”

“It worked, I take it.” 

“Yes.” Neal twists to look at the pot on the bright orange element. There’s a rich aroma coming off of it, but it’s not boiling over yet. It can wait a few minutes before he needs to poke at it with a wooden spoon.

“So it’s something El and I should research?”

Neal shrugs and tilts his head. “It’s not like it’s exotic Marrakech tickling. I’m sure you’ve done it before.”

“After we solve this case we’ll sit down for dinner, and afterwards we’ll try it.”

“After-?”

Pete gives him a look. “You knew me for a decade when you decided you wanted me. My dedication shouldn’t surprise you. Besides, now that you’re part of the target group it’s making me even angrier.”

“I’m touched,” Neal replies, only half sarcastic.

“Don’t be touched. Be creative. Figure out a different way of getting us into Mannor’s books.”

“Who?”

“Did you even look at the folder?” Peter rolls his eyes. “No, of course you didn’t, I don’t even know why I’m asking. You and paperwork? Never the two shall meet.”

Yeah. It really doesn’t look like Peter’s gonna be treating him any differently. It as close to a happily ever after as Neal’s ever going to get.


End file.
